Blog Entry #3

This blog entry will cover updates on my progress in the past week in Object Oriented Programming with Professor Downing.

What did you do this past week?

This past week, I made most of my developments on Collatz to pass the first two tests on HackerRank, and looked into coding a couple of the optimizations (and testing my changes). Outside of this, I planned to leave the rest of development for this coming weekend, as I focus more attention to my other classes.

What’s in your way?

I was previously blocked by the lack of new strategies to speed up my Collatz solution, but I now feel like I have a good understanding of what will be needed to crack the final test in HackerRank to be eligible for a top grade.

What will you do next week?

In the coming week, my top priority for this class is to finish the Collatz project well ahead of the Monday deadline so I don’t leave myself worrying about timing with other classes. Apart from this, I plan to look more into C++ and its structure for future assignments.

If you read it, what did you think of the Paper #3: Continuous Integration?

I found the Continuous Integration paper to be insightful and helpful, especially as I can relate it to my previous experience using these CI systems in the industry. Many of the concepts, including testing suites, automatic deployment pipelines, and CI dashboards rang a bell when I thought back to the code review process, especially at Microsoft.

What was your experience of IsPrime and Collatz optimizations?

I have not been able to make too much progress on the Collatz project, but the in-class activities and discussions to develop optimizations have been helpful in revealing tangible next steps for the project. Apart from this, I felt the IsPrime activity was helpful to get some more experience working with C++ in a discussion-filled paired programming exercise during class.

What made you happy this week?

I appreciated going further in depth to discover more optimizations for the Collatz project during class. In my opinion, all of these optimizations (except for maybe the unobvious idea of pasting in precomputed values) would have been easily discovered by students, but not many of us would think to incorporate all of these developments to combine into one rapid solution.

What’s your pick-of-the-week or tip-of-the-week?

My tip-of-the-week would be to take time to explore personal projects, even in your final year at UT Austin. I have had a blast already leading a team of driven members of the Hispanic Association of Computer Scientists (HACS) to get started on projects surrounding our website (texashacs.org). Even though this took a ton of work to get around aspects that were lacking throughout previous years, I am able to help students grow their abilities as developers in a close-to-realistic development environment.